Transcripts For CSPAN2 Book TV 20100509

conversation i began talking about the danger of antiwar movements whose purpose in my view was to disarm democracies. and encourage their enemies. i did not connect this indictment to any specific parties or to the activities of any of my children. but sarah was a participant in peace causes as we all understood. even if sarah had not been so involved i should have been more careful about venting abstract opinions on such a charged of subject. in this period of my life i was unable to speak about such matters without passions rising un-biden that were near ferocious. it was the still fresh pain from my friend's murder and indignation i had cultivated all my life as an advocate for social causes. an additional factor was my fear and presence of divorce of losing authority with my children and worse their affection. i did not want my children to become prey to the same illusions that had once ensnared me. but these were hardly excuses for the emotion that spilled into the dinner conversation. as i went on heedlessly with my attack. the assault continued until a moment when i became aware of the expression on my daughter's face. sarah had been silent throughout my tirade, hardly noticed ace barrelled ahead. but all of a sudden her features came into my view with an clarity. i saw her eyes had grown red and liquid and her face was convulsed as a weight was pressing down on her. her expression in that instant was one of such mute and irreimmediatable suffering that the distress of it has never left me seeing my daughter's unhappiness seeing that i was its cause brought me up short. i stopped my harang and caused to pause myself. i attempted to turn the conversation away from its contentious themes and fell into silence. even then i knew i should have done more. i should have attempted to undue directly what i had undone but i was unable to do so. trapped in an emotional paralysis, which was bourne of the recriminations and grieves that had become a dominant feature of myself. i was unable to retreat from the words i had uttered without feelings of self-betrayal. but at the same time, i could not block the terrible sight of my daughter in pain or the realization that i was its author. as the conversation shifted to other voices, i heeded my silence and thought who is this angry person? what sort of individual could do this to his child. for the next 20 years while i was still privileged to have her in my life, i cared the shame and anguish with me. i felt the same helpless misery and guilt. and worked as best i could to make it up to her. from that day to her last, whatever conflicts we had, i never again allowed myself to indulge such bitterness or to be so blind to her feelings and beliefs. i never did another thing to reduce her to tears or to inflict such pain. yet, i can never forget that i did. over the 20 years that followed i built a relationship with sarah across our differences that was quite close. we shared a common interest in the survival of the jewish people in the middle east. now threatened with a second holocaust. my powerful and fanatical neighboring armies and states. and we shared at the deepest levels a common view of the human predicament. and even of social justice. and why should that be surprising since she was my daughter. and of all my children the one who read my writings most carefully and took them most to heart. sarah explained her involvement in social causes this way. when i was growing up, my father was a devout marxist. my father volunteered in the schools and noticed that many of the children were coming to school hungry. so my father helped the black panther party with its free school breakfast programs. later my father was embittered by the many murders justified by marxist ideology. this left me with a twofold legacy. i have always felt driven to pursue justice but i am wary of ideology and partisan politics. sarah then described the spiritual dimension of her commitments to social causes. while i became very good at arguing against the death penalty from a practical point of view, i realized that there was a deeper, spiritual foundation for my opposition. i realized that what i really wanted to say is that it's bad for the soul of the nation. and there's no real traditional political language for that, the collective soul. at some point i read an amazing sermon by martin luther king, which he wrote right after the montgomery bus boycott. basically, he said, don't get on the bus full of braggadocio because you still have to live with these people. and i kind of realized that was the sort of political action that i wanted to be part of. i wanted to recognize the dignity of living. sarah and i did finally have one final clarification over these issues or rather i did since by then she was gone. i had written a book of reflections called "the end of time." it was not a political book. but did talk about the illusions that had possessed my youth and did so in terms that were uncompromises and without nuance and inadvertently struck at my daughter's faith. what i had learned through the most painful experiences in my life, i wrote, was to pay attention to the differences. it was a lesson at odds with the moral teachings that have come down to us across the millennia. all of the prophets, moses, jesus, buddha, the hindu gurus, however different we may look and act we are one high and low, strong and weak, virtuous and sinful. we are all incarnations of the same divine spirit. underneath our various skins, all are kin. do we really regard ourselves as one with rapists and murderers or should we? many try to believe it. but i cannot embrace this radical faith. i feel no kinship with those who can cut short a human life without remorse. or with terrorists who target the innocent or adults who torment young child for the sexual thrill. i expect no decent soul does either. in writing these words, i fail to take into account what sarah had said about these issues or to appreciate their depth. it was a milder version of what had occurred 20 years before. but this time she was able to defend herself and did. on the back of the particular page of the manuscript i had sent her, with these handwritten comments. first, have a little humility. you are not smarter than moses, jesus and buddha. note that you praise jesus' peacefulness when it is politically convenient slamming islam. she was referring to the way i contrasted jesus, the man of peace, with mohammed the conqueror who had declared war on unbelievers. but you have no respect for how jesus got there. this is a serious practice for me. when i take on every single day. it's about seeing people in the fullness of their humanity. they are not just child molesters, rapists, adulters. and how pathetically easy to pat yourself on the back for not being a child molester if you have no desire for the first place, resisting is no problem. she went on, back to the practice. if you see someone in the fullness of their humanity, you see how they are acting out their open confusion and suffering. this does not justify hurtful or even acts. it doesn't even always inspire forgiveness. but if you see someone this way, you respond more in sadness than in anger. and that is simply a more excellent state of being. even if you've never had this experience and the pity, respect the experience of those who have. i'm not talking about an idea either. this is a full bodied understanding of another person. this practice has, in fact, transformed all my relationships including ours by the way. for some reason, she never sent me these comments or if she did, i failed again to understand them. i wish now that i had. i wish i could tell her that i agree with her that we achieve a more excellent state of being when we see ourselves in others. i wish i could tell her how much i regret the fact that anger from my wounds, which i vented through my weakness was undoubtedly the cause of many of her silences. and of anguish about which i can only guess and how sorry i am for that. i wish i could tell her how moved i am. by the examples she set. and by what she was able to accomplish in the brief time given to her. i wish i could thank her for the affirmations of her father that i found in the writings she left behind. i wish i could tell her how much i miss her. death is brutal. and is no respecter of persons. there are no reprieves from its judgment. and there is no justice in its works. after years of struggle sarah's life was finally on the vernal of becoming easier. she had worked for more than a decade to get a masters degree that would qualify her for a regular teaching position. for all those years she had taken multiple buses every night to get to school and back. while working a day job to support herself. now the bus rides were behind her and her economic circumstances were improving as well. her maternal grandmother and her aunt barbara had both left her a little money. my son ben had created a successful business and given her some stock from the company he built. with this security she was already planning new travels to serve people in need around the world. i do not really know how -- why we all forgot about the prediction of an early death for turner syndrome children. perhaps it was because sarah had so much life in her. right to the end. when death takes someone you love, you are left with a hole in your heart. that he will never be filled. and a well of pain that will never be emptied. how are you, her mother asked me three months after she was gone? how are we supposed to live through this? indeed. i can take a small satisfaction in the fact that death's victory over my daughter remains incomplete. for though she is gone she has left me believe gift. when i see a homeless person destitute on the street, i think of sarah and my heart opens. if there is a criminal shut behind bars, i force myself to remember her compassion and a sadness shades my anger. if there is a child languishing in need, i think of my daughter in a mud floor hut ministering to the children of the tribe. and my heart goes out to them. these images and their influence are an incarnation of her life after life. her rolling of the soul. whenever i think of sarah, tears well in my eyes and my chest fills to the brim. and then i am overwhelmed by the terrible sorrow of our human lot. and how finally in this we are one. a year after we buried my daughter we returned to the cemetery to unveil her ed stone. her friend emily had come down from the street of washington to sipping the prayer for the dead. and a psalm of david. she had made a recording with the psalm and some of her cantorial music and arranged for music for sarah. she called the recording "sarah laughed" just before the unveiling she sent copies to her congregation with a note. my best and oldest friend sarah horowitz died unexpectedly in march. we buried her on my birthday. i'd always associated my birthday with the festival. now it would be sarah's yard side. the title of this recording "sarah laughed" in which god tells sarah she will have a son even though she is very old. hearing this sarah has the chutzpah to laugh. she laughs in the face of heaven. in the face of adversity. in the face of proprietary. her sense of humor is one of the ways sarah is remembered. she did the physically impossible and was a terrific baker to boot. the chronicle of her death is called, a life of sarah. because her legacy so overshadows her loss. and her mourners are so comforted by her life and by the memory of her laughter. emily explained that the songs she included were text from the morning psalms of david. they gave her the words of her grief. god, what is man that you should know him? the son of mortality that you should consider him. man is futility. his days are like a passing shadow. another text from the prophet micah provided her with words for sarah's legacy which must overshadow my grief. it said you have been told what is good and what god demands of you. to do justly, to love compassion and to walk modestly with your god. sarah had done all those things, emily said. and in the end, that is far more important than sadness. our legacy is the only thing we can really leave our mourners. we have to work to be sure that it is a comforting one. on the road to the cemetery a sudden squall put up a rainbow. a brisk wind put a chill in the air making it sharper than the year before. and the sky continued its alter nations. now gray overcast, now brilliant sunlight blue. the bay spring had returned to its normal cycle. my daughter's headstone was a rose granite and was set under the tree where we had put her in the earth. it was draped in a purple shawl that emily provided, which had been woven by women in nepal to benefit orphan children. next to the stone a rose bush had been planted at her mother's request. on its face was the inscription i had written. she was given mountains to climb. but she did with all the hearts that she touched. thank you. [applause] >> if there are questions. [inaudible] >> the question was, in my book it was clear that i had asked sarah questions about scripture. and what impact that had on me. and i guess basically what my religious view is. yeah, it was one of the great pleasures of the last 10 years of sarah's life that i understood she knew what she was talking about. she was very avid when it came to judaism and other things. she was a very avid student of judaism. one of our conversations, which i didn't go into was about the concept because there was a concept which is the one that i make war against, if you will. which is that the whole world can be healed by human beings. i think this is a very dangerous idea. it's the root of all radicalism. and, of course, it's the root of the islamic war against the west. the idea that if you convert everybody to islam, the world would be a holy place. no, it won't. of course, the first chapters of genesis tell us why. we were given paradise in the garden of eden. and it just showed we couldn't handle it. there was only one thing -- to stay in paradise -- all you had to not do was want to taste evil. it's the knowledge of good and evil. and to know evil is to participate in evil. and that was too much for us. and why? because we wanted to be as god. it's all in the first -- whatever six, eighteen chapters of genius versus. so you can see i'm not a biblical scholar. the desire to be as gods and redeem the world, that's what -- that's what progressivism, radicalism is about. and the kabbalah and the kabbalah is -- the idea is by uniting the divine sparks that are in the world with the god head by treating of it as holy, you heal the whole world. i was so enveloped in my conflicts that came out of my -- my commitments to radicalism. that i often didn't hear what sarah was saying. and what she was trying to tell me -- 'cause, you know, you remember everything. it's like, you know -- in an argument with somebody and you remember the good arguments afterwards. it's the same with your conversations when you can't have them anymore. in the tradition, the jews were beset by some delusional radicals. actually we get the word zealot from a sect of jews which had the really bad idea to take on the roman empire. and that's why almost all the problems jews have of being minorities in alien places and having their little country attacked comes because the zealots took on the roman empire. the palestine is a word the romans inflicted on the jews after they destroyed their temples and dispersed them in the four corners of the earth. they named their homeland which happens to be the west bank, judea and samarra. they named it after their enemies, the philistines, so much for the occupied lands. and then there were many false messiahs but there was a really big one in -- i've forgotten my dates now. in the 15th, 16th century. a man who was told by a scholar that he was the messiah. and he converted. i mean, all the jewish communities, he lived in the middle east. but eastern europe, half the jews were following this messiah. and then he went to convert -- just to show you how nothing really changes, to convert the sultan in turkey, the head of islam. and the sultan said, convert or we'll behead you and he converted. this was an unbelievable tragedy for the jews. so the rabbis had the concept of hurrying the messiah. human beings cannot make the messiah come more quickly. and, of course, that again is what -- that's what radicalism is about. making a messiah except they think of themselves as the messiah. and sarah -- sarah also -- i could go through many things. but these were the kind of conversations that we had. my own views are expressed pretty clearly in the end of time. i'm an agnostic. it's a mystery to me. i have obviously a tremendous respect for the religious vision. in fact, one of the things i describe in the book was christopher hitchens is a friend of mine. but i think his book "god is not great" is a very shallow read. and it's a bestseller because of that. christopher is a wonderful writer. and very intelligent man. but does not grasp the religious sensibility at all. and sarah and i shared this view. over christopher and we had an exchange which i describe at the end in "a cracking of the heart." i think to be a believer you have to be touched in a way. it's possible i spent so many years enthralled over a fake religion. and that believers are wrong. it doesn't really matter. it's what sarah said about politics. maybe i didn't quote that. but it's the way that you do politics that's important. it's the spirit you bring to it. it's not god tells you to vote for a particular party. and if you can be imbued with a religious spirit, that's, of course, tolerant. or very important. and compassionate. there are dimensions of experience that open up to you that are closed to others. and, of course, the one other thing i want to say about christopher's book and the movement against religion is that atheism is a religion. and it's a very dangerous one. if it's carried out with zealously. to me, this is -- this is what the pleasure i'm reading now marcus aureelious, deep in the roman empire. and this is why we're conservatives. it's human nature that keeps things pretty much the same. technology, innovations and technology give us the illusion that things change. but they don't. >> david, how on earth did you manage to go through the campaign year with sarah supporting clearly she must have supported barack hussein obama? >> that was easy. sarah got very excited about obama. in the early parts of the campaign. and if you remember what obama was saying in the campaign, and if you believed his words, was not hard to get excited. remember we're not red states, we're not blue states, we're the united states. i actually just came -- last night i was at uc santa barbara and karl rove gave this brilliant speech. and he was going through all these. i had forgotten all the things that were said in the campaign. but sarah was particularly inspired as many americans and lots of conservatives -- i think, 20% of his vote came from people who described themselves as conservatives. by the idea of change and hope. by the fact that here was an african-american. that's going to be the first african-american that's going to be president. and sarah -- she went to iowa actually. i mean, you know she was limping very badly. her -- she had just serious gastrointestinal issues. she could hardly hear. people treated her like -- if i could use the word, retarded, because she was short. because she didn't hear so she didn't always know that you were talking to her. and she got herself on a plane and she went to iowa in 2-degree weather. to campaign with people that she didn't know. since she was religious she had to find jews that she could spend the sabbath with. and she did it. and she came back really excited. it was the first campaign she had ever been in for anything that she had won. and i don't think anybody went to iowa through more difficulty than sarah did. and i said to her at the time, i said -- and, of course, this was the first time that an african-american had won. it was a white state. and it was clear that he would have a shot at the nomination. and i said to her, i said even if you -- even if -- even if -- actually, the talk then was that the clintons were going to steal the nomination from him. even if the nomination is stolen, even if he's nominated and doesn't win, even if he wins and disappoints, you have still -- america is now a changed place in this sense, not in the deep philosophical sense i was trying to talk about before. but america is dramatically changed. and, you know, i think that was a good thing that she did. because disaster, though, i now -- i agree that this administration is, of course, there's always two sides to things. it's the law of unintended consequences. obama has single-handedly and taken the conservative movement and out of the republican party one of the deepest holes that was ever dug on it and put it on top within a year. and that's magic. i don't know. i often think about, you know, what would sarah be thinking now. sarah was a very -- very thoughtful. she was not ever a radical the way i was. ever. and part of the passage in the book that i didn't quote about, you know, her -- i was very concerned about her writing to criminals. she said just because i write to somebody in jail doesn't mean i would trust them with my purse. so she was a realist. and, of course,, you know, not only a politics -- when people have these political disagreements, it's like that story with the blind men and the elephant. i mean, everybody has a piece of information. but now our media world or our world has become so fragmented that people only talk to -- to themselves. conservatives have a big edge here because they're forced to listen to liberals a lot. in some sense liberals are getting that dose because of cable tv and the internet. but in large part people -- it takes a long time for things to get through. so if you are, you know, tapped into the conservative internet and your community is conservative, you will quickly see what's happening. with obama. if you're not, you won't. and, you know, unfortunately i didn't have that pleasure of having the talks with sarah since obama's election. there's a lot of people out there with buyer's remorse as we all know. >> david, you mentioned the depression and despair that greeted your -- that you experienced in parking lot the left after the murder of your friend. my question is, the former communist of the '50s that people like frank myers seen while eccentric never had that reaction yet in your era who left were very much beyond depression. phil babbit went through heavy drug usage and alcoholism died at a very early age and with was during can your era and involvement in '60s. what do you attribute your leaving in tremendous alcoholism and drug abuse -- >> maybe he was doing drugs in the '60s. see, i was a very serious marxist. that's one of the reasons -- as a contrast, when bill ayers was elected vice president of sds, in his acceptance speech -- and this is a college student. he boasted he hadn't read a book in a year. that was part of his speech. i had read all four books of das capital. i was just different in that sense. i took the ideas very seriously. and, you know, worked through them. and i've written a book about that, the politics of bad faith. but also in "radical son," i described how -- since i had -- since i took the idea seriously and actually read the books and tried to put them together with reality, it didn't compute. reality just didn't compute. i guess that would be my answer there. well, thank you all. [applause] >> david horowitz, former editor of ramparts magazine is the center of the popular culture and the editor of "frontpage" magazine.com and he's author of radical son the politics of bad faith and the art of political war. to find out more visit front page magazine.com. >> we're at frostburg state university speaking with robert m. moore iii about his book "they all said i would marry a white girl: coming to grips with white america." why did they -- who actually said that you would always marry a white girl and why did they say that? >> i think that was more of an internal feeling on my part. i grew up in, i think, a very fascinating time period in the suburbs of philadelphia during the 1960s. we were one of the few african-american families perhaps the only african-american family to ride the wave of millions of whites who left urban america at that time period to go to the suburbs. at the same time, many african-americans were coming off the land out of rural america and going to the cities. so i felt very unique. i felt caught in between, i think, two groups. almost like two sides. and it was a time period that was premulticulturalism. and so i felt internally that perhaps i was destined to marry someone who was white. rather than african-american. >> one of the first part of your book is -- you have a couple of different sections. the first one called straddling the fence. how did you -- how did you come to grips with your identity as an african-american male growing up in a predominantly white area of suburban philadelphia? >> it was tough. i don't think i did. i think i still wrestle with that. the impact of that time period. i grew up with people who -- very good friends of mine. i still have great friends from that time period. who held numerous stereotypes about african-americans and i internalized those stereotypes. i was fortunate both my parents worked, which was unusual for that time period. i came from a dual-incomed family and so tenth grade rolled around. i opted out of the public school system. went to a private school. and i had my first contact with african-americans actually. my first girlfriend was in tenth grade and she was african-american. so i had to leave my -- that situation and go someplace else, i think, to really work on my identity. >> what do you think it means to be -- what is an african-american identity? >> today or -- >> either, i guess, today or what you felt growing up? what did it mean to be that? >> that's an interesting question, a big question. i think we have stereotypes of each other. and i subscribe to something called group position theory. you know, i kind of look at groups of people in in our society and i look at the overall -- their overall place in society. and i think we hold stereotypes about groups. and we internalize those stereotypes. i was socialized as a middle class person growing up in the suburbs of philadelphia. i'm not sure there's any one identity that african-americans have or that whites have. but i think we do feel a sense of cultural difference, whether it's a real cultural difference or not. i think we feel an in-group and out-group and one day i hope we get over that in this country. and we feel a sense of oneness. >> why did you decide to write the book in the first place? >> i felt i had a lot to get off my chest. and i really think what my experiences were quite unique. i have three kids. i started having kids late in life. i did marry a white female. and we now have for the first time in this history a mixed race movement, a biracial movement. and a lot of my thoughts today center around racial identity. i'm fascinated by people who call themselves mixed race today. whereas, you know, up until the past 30 years, 35 years, if you had any african-american ancestry you are considered african-american. i think it's absolutely fascinating. and so i really wanted to just dive into -- to write a book how race changed over the past 35, 40 years. >> what do you think -- how has it changed? what's the biggest thing you've seen today versus growing up in the '60s? >> well, it's questionable. because i think many people think race relations have move forward in a very positive way. and i question that tremendously. you know, we still have a massively segregated society. 86% of whites within the suburbs are living in neighborhoods with less than 1% african-american residence in their neighborhood. we think things have changed massively but mixed race -- you know, my kids, how will my kids identify themselves growing up in an all-white area right now in rural america. i'm not sure, for example, on mixed race identity, i think it feeds off the current polarization of african-americans and whites in the society. there's still a great polarization of african-americans and whites in society. although i think there's great potential, great potential for those two groups, whites and african-americans to come together in some form in the future. >> well, thank you so much. we've been talking with robert m. moore iii, author of "they always said i would marry a white girl: coming to grips with race in america. >> host: well, there's a new worldwide community gathering to read a book. and it's called one book and one twitter and the organizer is jeff howe. mr. howe, explain to us what one book, one twitter is? >> guest: you know, in a sense it's a global book club. but the inspiration was really not book clubs. which twitter has a few off and they're really wonderful as the big reads that we've seen over the last 10 years. the first one being nancy pearl's what if everyone in seattle read the same book? where in 1998 where all of seattle read "the sweet hereafter." the one that inspired me was one book one chicago, the first -- the inaugural case where they read to kill a mockingbird. and the source of connections that drew. and i was reading about that in a course on the fellow harvard and i was taking a course there. and the idea that these programs while they get people to read and that's wonderful -- what they do is they build social capital. they build connections between people. they give people with nothing in common something in common. >> host: so what book was chosen to be read? >> guest: well, there was a long and involved nominating and then voting process. ultimately the book chosen was american gods by neil gaiman. >> why did you choose that? >> i didn't. why did the crowd choose it, that's a good question. there were a lot of classics on this. i launched at wired.com. and the books that were nominated and then collected the most votes in that first phase -- we had a lot of science fiction. brave new world, fahrenheit 451 was probably the runner-up. there's a lot of neil gaiman fans that read wired. but even when we added the board picked the six popular ones and add four titles to introduce some diversity into the list of finalists, people -- a broad group of people really decided that they wanted neil's book. and i think anything anyone read in high school or klen people didn't really want to read from this project. they wanted to read something new. >> host: has people started reading american gods and started tweeting about it. >> guest: good heavens yes. it's been -- we have a lot of traffic. it's been at least as successful as i could have wished, probably more. you know, we're -- i keep saying this is one big experiment. one book one twitter one big experiment. we've never -- no one to my knowledge tried to conduct a global book club before. and it's so international that there's no dip in activity overnight. because that's when all the people and everywhere are reading the book and tweeting about it. so it's what we've done is there's one hash tag it's hash1b1t where general comments are being made. we split the subsequent discussions into that chapters. so that people aren't giving away some of the plot points. >> so if some of booktv's viewers wanted to join the discussion right now, can they? >> guest: absolutely. log on to twitter. and just do a search for hash mark 1b1t and they should also follow our official count. and that's the @ symbol. >> host: how long will this be going on? >> guest: for another eight weeks. >> host: all right. thanks for joining us on booktv. >> guest: sure. thank you. >> ellen fitzpatrick, history professor at the university of new hampshire presents a collection of 250 condolence letters sent to jacqueline kennedy following the assassination of john f. kennedy. the 6th floor museum in dallas hosts this hour-long event. >> tonight's program is one more great opportunity to feature a new and pungent components that we share at this national historic site now 46 years later we still provide powerful context for our community and guests to learn, reflect, discuss and remain inspired by the legacy of president john f. kennedy. the sixth floor museum is dedicated to providing strong and powerful relevant links to our relatively recent past especially as we gaze upon the new and younger generations coming before us. and we realize that they were not alive to remember where they were when the news of the assassination came across national television. our younger generations cannot quite fathom supreme shock and grethat went around the world and still resonates today so strongly with those of you all who remember what happened here in dallas in november, 1963. it is very important that we do not forget that there's still much more to share. while we still have this time and that this is one more important of our institutional priorities at the sixth floor museum. tonight we welcome ellen fitzpatrick, an author of "letters to jackie." this wonderful new book is the first to ever examine the extraordinary collection of condolence letters sent by the so-called ordinary americans to jacqueline kennedy after the assassination of her husband in 1963. before i introduce ellen fitzpatrick, this evening's program is being recorded so may i ask that you please turn off your cell phones and pagers. photography and recording of any kind is strictly prohibited. and be kind enough to fill out the questionnaires and the sample surveys that are on your seats. and this is to ensure that we continue to offer high quality programs. it really is my great pleasure to introduce our guest speaker, ellen fitzpatrick who is carpenter and professor at the university of new hampshire. she has been recognized for excellence in public service. and she specializes in modern american political and intellectual history and is the author of and editor of six books. she appears regularly on pbs newshour with jim lehrer. ms. fitzpatrick received her ph.d. from the university and is an expert commentator for the "new york times," "washington post," cbs news face the nation and national public radio, among others. we are quite delighted to have you here tonight. and tell us about your new book. please join me in welcoming ellen fitzpatrick. [applause] >> thank you. >> thank you. there's a world of difference between the fitzpatricks and the fitzgeralds. it's only the difference between the scots and the irish. no big deal. unless you're a scot and an irish and it's a big deal. thank you for that lovely introduction. actually i have an avatar -- i'm on the newshour tonight believe it or not while i'm talking to you. they taped it a week ago. and i had a wonderful interview with gwen ifill talking about the book and i'm delighted to be here. i've not been to it be before. -- texas before. and just two days ago i was at the john f. kennedy library in boston. we had a big event there. launching this book. and it was very rewarding for me because i spent so many weeks and months in the kennedy library doing the research for this book. but i was very much looking forward to the trip to dallas, which i thus far have found to be a city full of wonderful people. friendly, warm, delightful. i was in austin last night.& and i'm convinced i'm going to have to come back and spend more time here. the museum is an incredible place. and for me to be here tonight and to givew&i these remarks to talk about this book in this setting, of course, is very moving to me. so thank you for being here. and for joining me for this evening. i'm going to talk as little as possible because i want you to hear the voices of the letter writers. some of them have been excerpted in the newspapers over the last few days. i'm going to -- i would like to begin simply by telling you how i stumbled across this collection which has been sitting in the kennedy library since the library was built. and apparently occasionally people came in and would look for their letter. they remembered writing a condolence letter and they wanted to see it. the problem was that the letters are not organized by state, by name, by correspondent. my research and the ensuing efforts have led the archivists doing more work on this collection.wcçz but just so you know, if you wrote a letter to mrs. kennedy, it might or might not be there. but there's really no way to find it. i can help them find now -- i read -- let me back up a little bit. i read the letters from americans that still exists. what happened is that there were so many of them, seven weeks after the assassination, mrs. kennedy had already received 800,000 letters. in a single day 45,000 letters arrived at the white house. and by a year and a half or so, there were over 1.5 million letters. now, in 1965, when decisions were being made about how to organize president kennedy's library, the presidential libraries are all part of the national archive system as you know. the national archives didn't feel they had a good way of handling this volume of material. and so they pulped is the word, destroyed most of this collection. they saved all of the foreign mail, ironically. there are 80 boxes of foreign mail. and they saved vip mail. very boring by the way. there are famous names at the bottom of very boring letters was my read of it. that's kind of unfair and there are some that are interesting and i put a few in the book but not interesting as compared to what ordinary people wrote. they saved letters in which the person described a personal -- they called them personal remembrances of an encounter with president kennedy. that are mentioned in a condolence letter but they had a team of archivists who went through the collection and picked representative samples of the letters. and they wound up with -- in the end there were about 15,000 letters from americans. that's the collection i focused on. those are the letters that i read. i read them all. in addition to that, there are scattered console lens letters in the papers of robert kennedy. i read some of those. and in other collections in the kennedy library but my focus is on the general condolence mail. one of the things that the archivists did that was smart, they saved 3,000 letters, three big file boxes literally jammed with letters. of people -- and these are unprocessed. the archivists, the chief archivists is wonderful to give me access to these letters. that had not been culled in any way. so that a scholar like me coming along could see what the inflow was like. of letters before they had been, you know, sort of sorted out. and those served as a control sample for me. it was hardly idea. but it was better than nothing. and i read those letters. i found some wonderful letters in those boxes by the way. and they allowed me to get -- to compare the culled collection to the raw data. and there was essentially no difference between the two. so that is what the collection looked like. i was going to the kennedy library to work on something completely different. and as part of that project, i wanted to get a sense of how people saw president kennedy at the time of his death. before either all that that was developed after his death, that he was a martyr and a superhuman person and then the ensuing revisionist history that was undone and in my mind swung the pendulum too far in the other direction so that younger people today, my students, don't understand what was it all about. why were so people drawn in by john f. kennedy. he wasn't president very long. he didn't seem to accomplish very much. what was the kennedy phenomenon all about? and so i started thinking what could i look at that might give me a sense of how americans viewed him. and i asked the archivist if there was any condolence mail. i remembered this because my family sat and watched mrs. kennedy thank the nation for these letters. seven weeks after the assassination it was her first appearance on national television after the funeral. and i remembered this. it was in the brain pan and i was driving down the southeast expressway towards the kennedy library. it was just like a car tune and this light bulb, where do i start on this project? i'll ask the archivists and do you have the letters. he explained most of them are destroyed and i said all of it. he said no, we have some. so i said, okay, could i see a bob? -- box and i took out the first file folder and one of the very first letters i looked at was written by a family of eskimos in alaska. and then i turned a couple of pages and there was a letter from a coal mining family in west virginia. and then the next letter was from republicans who really disliked kennedy. one woman was looking forward to voting against him in 1964 and was sorry she was going to be deprived of this opportunity. but in those letters -- condolence letters to mrs. kennedy are like condolence letters most of you -- judging by the age profile has written a condolence letter. it's to console the bereaved persons. and within them i quickly came to see there was much, much more. and what we could gain was a snapshot of the country. responding to a cataclysmic historical event at a specific moment in time. and they were tremendously to my mind revealing. so i became convinced that they needed to be brought to light. i was very enthusiastic about this. i went off to my colleagues. and i was on leave at the radcliffe institute. i said i found this amazing collection at the kennedy library. i got to forget the other book. i'm going to do a new book. i want to publish these letters. but there's one hitch. i have to find these people. the copyright under u.s. copyright law resided with the letter-writer. even though the letters are in the national archives. they belong to the american people. they belong most fundamentally to the person who wrote the letter or their heirs. and that for a period of the -- the copyright law, i think, has changed. originally i think it was 75 years and maybe 90 years now. so i was going to have to find these people if i wanted to publish their letter and ask their permission or i'm going to have to find their next of kin. well, i was very cocky. no big deal. i'll find these folks. i badly underestimated what this was going to involve. by the end of this book, i had genealogists, a team of genealogists working with me to find people. and the genealogists were hiring genealogists. [laughter] >> that was scary. in places like dallas and going through city directories. the tale of how we found people is fascinating but i won't digress too much on that and that's an amazing story. we succeeded in the end, i found 3,000 out of the 15,000 letters that i thought were worthy of publication. i was pretty sure my publisher wasn't going to publish 3,000 letters. and so the really hard thing was to then get it down to 300 letters. and i got it down to 300 and then my editor was less

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